Mark Gonzales: Instead of Eros Avenged

Artist, writer and skateboarder Mark Gonzales (born 1968) is always in motion and his work is a real-time product of that unceasing movement. His visual output ranges from drawings and paintings to dolls and in this case, photographs taken with that contemporary equivalent of the Kodak Brownie, the cell phone. This collection of Gonzales' cell-phone pictures takes Jerry Chadwick's poem "Instead of Eros Avenged" as its starting point: "Started to type / the first chapter / where green eyes / press into / grey eyes / like ivy on granite / and remembered / Lorca shot in Spain / Richard Heakin beaten / to death outside / a tuscon gay bar / and decided / NO / there have been / enough deaths / already." The photographs depict a life of joyful and chaotic spontaneity, showing Gonzales posing with fans, hanging out with family and friends and performing wallrides.